65 Proof Read online

  “You were being selfish.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were being bad.”

  The word stuck like a chicken bone in my throat. “Yes.”

  His thumb caressed the detonator, and he licked his lips.

  “What’s the difference between that and what I’m doing right now?”

  The gun weighed a hundred pounds, and my arms were really starting to shake.

  “I broke a man’s heart. You’re planning on killing a bunch of people. That’s worse.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow. “So I’m a worse person than you?”

  I hesitated, then said, “Yes.”

  “Do you want to shoot me?”

  “No.”

  “But I’m bad. I deserve it.”

  “Bad things can be forgiven, Paul.”

  “Do you think your boyfriend would forgive me if I killed you?”

  I pictured Latham. His forgiveness was the best gift I’d ever gotten. It proved that love had no conditions. That mistakes weren’t deal breakers.

  I wanted to live to see Latham again.

  Regain control, Jack. Demand proof.

  “Show me the bomb,” I said to Paul. My tone was hard, professional. I wasn’t going to neutralize the situation by talking. Paul was too far gone. When dealing with bullies, you have to push back or you won’t gain their respect.

  “No,” he said.

  Louder, “Show me the bomb!”

  At the word bomb a collective wail coursed through the crowd, and they began to stampede backward.

  He began to shake, and his eyes became mean little slits. “What did I say about yelling, Jack?”

  Paul’s finger danced over the detonator button.

  “You’re bluffing.” I chanced a look around. The perimeter was widening.

  “I’ll prove I’m not bluffing by blowing up the whole—”

  I got even closer, thrusting my chin at him, steadying my gun.

  “I’m done with this, Paul. Drop the gun and the detonator, or I’m going to shoot you.”

  “If you shoot me, you’ll die.”

  “I’m not going to believe that unless you show me the goddamn bomb.”

  Time stretched out, slowed. After an impossibly long second he lowered his eyes, reaching down for his buttons.

  I was hoping he was bluffing, praying he was bluffing, and then his shirt opened and I saw the red sticks of dynamite.

  Son of a bitch. He wasn’t bluffing.

  I couldn’t let him press that detonator. So I fired.

  Thousands of hours on the shooting range meant the move was automatic, mechanical. His wrist exploded in blood and bone, and before the scream escaped his lips I put one more in the opposite shoulder. He dropped both his gun and the detonator. I kicked them away, hoping I hadn’t killed him, hoping he’d be alive until help came.

  I stared at his chest, saw two electrode pads hooked up to his heart. His waist was surrounded by explosives, and in the center was a black box with a radiation symbol on it.

  Paul coughed, then slumped onto his back. His wrist spurted, and his shoulder poured blood onto the pavement like a faucet. Each bullet had severed an artery. He was doomed.

  I shrugged off my jacket, pressed it to the shoulder wound, and yelled, “Bomb! Get out of here!” to the few dozen idiots still gawking. Then I grabbed Paul’s chin and made him look at me.

  “How do I disarm this, Paul?”

  His voice was soft, hoarse. “…you…you killed me…”

  “Paul! Answer me! How can I shut off the bomb!”

  His eyelids fluttered. My blazer had already soaked through with blood.

  “…how…”

  “Yes, Paul. Tell me how.”

  “…how does…”

  “Please, Paul. Stay with me.”

  His eyes locked on mine.

  “…how does it feel to finally kill someone?”

  Then his head tilted to the side and his mouth hung open.

  I felt for the pulse in his neck. Barely there. He didn’t have long.

  I checked the crowd again. The traffic cop had fled, and the drivers of the surrounding cars had abandoned them. No paramedics rushed over, lugging life-saving equistaent. No bomb squad technicians rushed over, to cut the wires and save the day. It was only me, and Paul. Soon it would be only me, and a few seconds later I’d be gone too.

  Should I run, give myself a chance to live? How much contamination would this dirty bomb spread? Would I die anyway, along with hundreds or thousands of others? I didn’t know anything about radiation. How far could it travel? Could it go through windows and buildings? How much death could it cause?

  Running became moot. Paul’s chest quivered, and then was still.

  I knew even less about the inner working of the human body than I did about radiation. If I started CPR, would that trick the bomb into thinking Paul’s heart was still beating?

  I didn’t have time to ponder it. Without thinking I tore off the electrodes and stuck them up under my shirt, under my bra, fixing them to my chest, hoping to find my heartbeat and stop the detonation.

  I held my breath.

  Nothing exploded.

  I looked around again, saw no help. And none could get to me, with the traffic jam. I needed to move, to get to the next intersection, to find a place where the bomb squad could get to me.

  But first I called Dispatch.

  “This is Lieutenant Jack Daniels, from the 26th District. I’m on the corner of Michigan and Pearson. I need the bomb squad. A dirty bomb is hooked up to my heartbeat. I also need someone to check out a company downtown called LarsiTech, a medical supply company in the Prudential Building. There may have been some homicides there.”

  I gave the Dispatch officer my cell number, then grabbed Paul’s wrist and began to drag him to the curb. It wasn’t easy. My grip was slippery with blood, and the asphalt was rough and pulled at his clothes. I would tug, make sure the electrodes were still attached, take a step, and repeat.

  Halfway there my cell rang.

  “This is Dispatch. The bomb squad is on the way, ETA eight minutes. Are you sure on the company name, Lieutenant?”

  “He said it several times.”

  “There’s no listing for LarsiTech in the Prudential Building. I spelled it several different ways.”

  “Then where is LarsiTech?”

  “No place I could find. Chicago had three medical supply companies, and I called them all. They didn’t report any problems. The phone book has no LarsiTech. Information has no listing in Illinois, or the whole nation.”

  I looked down at Paul, saw the wires had ripped out of the black box. And that the black box had a local cable company’s name written on the side. And that the radiation symbol was actually a sticker that was peeling off. And that the dynamite was actually road flares with their tops cut off.

  Suicide by cop.

  I sat down in the southbound lane on Michigan Avenue, sat down and stared at my hands, at the blood caked under the fingernails, and wondered if I’d ever be able to get them clean.

  In 2005 I decided that I knew so many thriller authors I should edit an anthology. It developed into a collection of hitman stories called These Guns For Hire. I’m hugely proud of that antho, which was published in 2006 by Bleak House. I also discovered that the easiest way to get published is to stick one of your own stories in the anthology that you’re editing.

  “Why should you care? Guys like you got no scruples.”

  If I had any scruples, I would have fed this asshole his teeth. Or at least walked away.

  But he was right.

  “Half up front,” I said. “Half at the scene.”

  He looked at me like flowers had suddenly sprouted out of my bald head, Elmer Fudd-style.

  “At the scene?”

  I’d been through this before, with others. Everyone seemed to want their spouse dead these days. Contract murder was the new black.

  I leaned back, pushing away the red
plastic basket with the half-eaten hot dog. We were the only customers in Jimmy’s Red Hots, the food being the obvious reason we dined alone. The shit on a bun they served was a felony.. If my stomach wasn’t clenched tight with codeine withdrawal spasms, I might have complained.

  “You want her dead,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. “The cops always go after the husband.”

  He didn’t seem to mind the local cuisine, and jammed the remainder of his dog into his mouth, hoarding it in his right cheek as he spoke.

  “I was thinking she’s home alone, someone breaks in to rob the place, gets surprised and kills her.”

  “And why weren’t you home?”

  “I was out with friends.”

  He was a big guy. Over six feet, neck as thick as his head so he looked like a redwood with a face carved into it. Calloused knuckles and a deep tan spoke of a blue collar trade, maybe construction. Probably considered killing the little lady himself, many times. A hands-on type. He seemed disappointed having to hire out.

  Found me through the usual channels. Knew someone who knew someone. Fact was, the sicker I got, the less I cared about covering my tracks. Blind drops and background checks and private referrals were things of the past. So many people knew what I did I might as well be walking around Chicago wearing a sandwich board that said, “Phineas Troutt–He Kills People For Money.”

  “Cops will know you hired someone,” I told him. “They’ll look at your sheet.”

  He squinted, mean dropping over him like a veil.

  “How do you know about that?”

  The hot dog smell was still getting to me, so I picked up my basket and set it on the garbage behind out table.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Battery.”

  He shrugged. “Domestic bullshit. Little bitch gets lippy sometimes.”

  “Don’t they all.”

  I felt the hot dog coming back up, forced it to stay put. A sickening, flu-like heat washed over me.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  Sweat stung my eyes, and I noticed my hands were shaking. Another cramp hit, making me flinch.

  “What are you, some kinda addict?”

  “Cancer,” I said.

  He didn’t appear moved by my response.

  “Can you still do this shit?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long you got?”

  Months? Weeks? The cancer had metastasized from my pancreas, questing for more of me to conquer. At this stage, treatment was bullshit. Only thing that helped was cocaine, tequila, and codeine. Being broke meant a lot of pain, plus withdrawal, which was almost as bad.

  I had to get some money. Fast.

  “Long enough,” I told him.

  “You look like a little girl could kick your ass.”

  I gave him my best tough-guy glare, then reached for the half-empty glass bottle of ketchup. Maintaining eye contact, I squeezed the bottle hard in my trembling hands. In one quick motion, I jerked my wrist to the side, breaking the top three inches of the bottle cleanly off.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  I dropped the piece on the table and he stared at it, mouth hanging open like a fish. I shoved my other hand into my pocket, because I cut my palm pretty deep. Happens sometimes. Glass isn’t exactly predictable.

  “You leave the door open,” I told him. “I come in around 2am. I break your wife’s neck. Then I break your nose.”

  He went from awed to pissed. “Fuck you, buddy.”

  “Cops won’t suspect you if you’re hurt. I’ll also leave some of my blood on the scene.”

  I watched it bounce around behind his Neanderthal brow ridge. Waited for him to fill in all the blanks. Make the connections. Take it to the next level.

  His thoughts were so obvious I could practically see them form pictures over his head.

  “Yeah.” He nodded, slowly at first, then faster. “That DNA shit. Prove someone else was there. And you don’t care if you leave any, cause you’re a dead man anyway.”

  I shrugged like it was no big deal. Like I’d fully accepted my fate.

  “When do we do this?”

  “When can you have the money ready?”

  “Anytime.”

  “How about tonight?”

  The dull film over his eyes evaporated, revealing a much younger man. One who had dreams and hopes and unlimited possibilities.

  “Tonight is great. Tonight is perfect. I can’t believe I’m finally gonna be rid of the bitch.”

  “Till death do you part. Which brings me to the original question. Why don’t you just divorce her?”

  He grinned, showing years of bad oral hygiene.

  “Bitch ain’t keeping half my paycheck for life.”

  Ain’t marriage grand?

  He gave me his address, we agreed upon a time, and then I followed him outside, put on a baseball cap and some sunglasses, escorted him down a busy Chinatown sidewalk to the bank, and rammed a knife in his back the second after he punched his PIN into the enclosed ATM.

  I managed to puncture his lung before piercing his heart, and he couldn’t draw a breath, couldn’t scream. I put my bleeding hand under his armpit so he didn’t fall over, and again he gave me that look, the one of utter disbelief.

  “Don’t be surprised,” I told him, pressing his CHECKING ACCOUNT button. “You were planning on killing me tonight, after I did your wife. You didn’t want to pay me the other half.”

  I pressed WITHDRAW CASH and punched in a number a few times higher than our agreed upon figure.

  He tried to say something, but bloody spit came out.

  “Plus, a large ATM withdrawal a few hours before your wife gets killed? How stupid do you think the cops are?”

  His knees gave out, and I couldn’t hold him much longer. My injured palm was bleeding freely, soaking into his shirt. But leaving DNA was the least of my problems. This was a busy bank, and someone would be walking by any second.

  I yanked out the knife, having to put my knee against his back to do so because of the suction; gravity knives don’t have blood grooves. Then I wiped the blade on his shirt, and jammed it and the cash into my jacket pocket.

  He collapsed onto the machine, and somehow managed to croak, “Please.”

  “No sympathy here,” I told him, pushing open the security door. “Guys like me got no scruples.”

  A lot of my readers like Herb, but for some reason I don’t enjoy using him in shorts as much as Jack, Harry, and Phin. This is a rare exception. I originally wrote this as a chapbook, to give away at writing conferences. It deals with Herb’s retirement, a topic later covered in greater detail in my novel Dirty Martini.

  “How did you know pot roast is my favorite?”

  Detective First Class Herb Benedict stepped into the kitchen, following the aroma. He gave his wife Bernice a peck on the cheek and made a show of sniffing deeply, then sighing.

  “I’ve been making pot roast every Friday night for the past twenty-two years, and you say that every time you come home.”

  Herb grinned. “What happens next?”

  “You pinch me on the bottom, change into your pajamas, and we eat in the family room while watching HBO.”

  “Sounds pretty good so far.” He gently tugged Bernice away from the stove and placed his hands on her bottom, squeezing. “Then what?”

  Bernice gave Herb’s ample behind a pinch of its own.

  “After HBO we go upstairs, and I force you to make love to me.”

  Herb sighed. “A tough job, but I have to repay you for the pot roast.”

  He leaned down, his head tilted to kiss her, just as the bullet plinked through the bay window. It hit the simmering pot with the sound of a gong, showering gravy skyward.

  Herb reacted instinctively. His left hand grabbed Bernice and pulled her down to the linoleum while his right yanked the Sig Sauer from his hip holster and trained it on the window.

  Silence, for several frantic heartbeats.

  “Herb…”

  �
��Shh.”

  From the street came the roar of an engine and screaming tires. They quickly blended into Chicago traffic. Herb wanted to go have a look, but a burning sensation in his hip stopped him. He reached down with his free hand, feeling dampness.

  “Herb! You’re been shot!”

  He brought the fingers to his mouth.

  “No—it’s juice from the pot roast. Leaked down the stove.”

  Motioning for his wife to stay down, Herb crawled over to the window and peered out. The neighborhood was quiet.

  He turned his attention to the stove top. The stainless steel pot had a small hole in the side, pulsing gravy like a wound.

  Herb wondered which was worse; his Friday night plans ruined, or the fact that someone just tried to kill him.

  He looked into the pot and decided it was the former.

  “Dammit. The bastards killed my pot roast.”

  He tore himself away from the grue and dialed 911, asking that they send the CSU over. And for the CSU to bring a pizza.

  Officer Dan Rogers leaned over the pot, his face somber.

  “I’m sorry, Detective Benedict. There’s nothing we can do to save the victim.”

  Herb frowned around a limp slice of sausage and pepperoni. Over two dozen gourmet pizza places dotted Herb’s neighborhood, and the Crime Scene Unit had gone to a chain-store. The greasy cardboard box the pie came in probably had more flavor.

  “You might think you’re amusing, but that’s an eighteen dollar roast.”

  “I can tell. Look at how tender it is. It’s practically falling off the bone. And the aroma is heavenly. It’s a damn shame.”

  Officer Hajek snapped a picture. “Shouldn’t let it go to waste. When you’re done, can I take it home for the dog?”

  Herb watched Roberts attack the roast with gloved hands and wanted to cry at the injustice of it all. Another slice of pizza found its way into Herb’s mouth, but it offered no comfort.

  “And…gotcha, baby!”

  Rogers held up his prize with a pair of forceps. The slug was roughly half an inch long, shaped like a mushroom and dripping gravy.

  It looked good enough to eat.

  “I think it’s a 22LR. Must have been a high velocity cartridge. Punched a hole through the window without shattering it.”